The present invention relates to an image data storing method and an image-forming system in which image-forming apparatus and information-processing apparatus are coupled each other through a network, and also relates to recording media, which store programs being readable for the information-processing apparatus.
There has been an image-forming system in which a digital copier equipped with networking functions, serving as an example of image-forming apparatus, and a personal computer, serving as an example of information-processing apparatus, are coupled each other through a network. Although, generally speaking, in the image-forming system, the image data outputted by the personal computer are transferred to the digital copier through the network, and the digital copier outputs the image based on the transferred image by using the network printing function, there are some examples in which the image data, generated by the scanner unit equipped in the digital copier, is further transferred to the personal computer.
When a document, having a plurality of pages, is read by the scanner unit equipped in the digital copier as a consecutive unit job to generate the image data, page data in the form of “header area+image data” for every page, and job data, which includes address data indicating the start position of the page data on the image memory and set data of the job, for every job, are developed on the image memory. Since the page data and job data are arranged in a format to be processed by the control program of the digital copier, and also transferred to the personal computer in the form of binary data, in order to process them as the image data, it is impossible for the user to handle them. Therefore, there has been a problem that it is difficult for the user to edit the image data of a plurality of pages, generated as a unit job, by means of the personal computer.
Further, there has been another problem that, since most of the image data area in the image memory is formed in a specific format exclusive for the digital copier, and sometimes, an exclusive compression algorism is employed for compressing the image data to save the memory capacity, it is impossible to edit the image data in most of the cases, even if the general-purpose application software for editing images is introduced in the personal computer.